For Governors in G.O.P. Slots, a Liberal Turn

From The New York Times:

Here are the things that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be bragging about on the campaign trail: an initiative to lower greenhouse gases with the onus on big companies, a $1 increase in the state’s minimum wage and a program to open up access to prescription drugs.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, who six months ago fashioned himself a Republican reformer bent on hobbling entrenched Democratic institutions, is not just tolerating positions generally associated with liberal candidates. Rather, he is using them as the centerpiece of his re-election campaign, marking the first time in a generation that a Republican governor here has clung to the left during a re-election fight.

The strategy is not unique to Mr. Schwarzenegger’s campaign. Across the nation’s 36 races for governor, Republican candidates in states heavy with moderate or Democratic voters are playing up their liberal positions on issues including stem cell research, abortion and the environment, while remaining true to their party’s platform on taxes and streamlining government.

Governing Republican and campaigning Democratic is not a new technique; George E. Pataki, the New York governor, has made a career winning elections as a Republican in a mostly Democratic state. But political experts say that the strategy is particularly pervasive this year, as Republicans seek to distance themselves from an unpopular president and to respond to what is widely recognized as polarization fatigue among many voters.

“The conservative side of Republican party has been so dominant in recent years that we haven’t seen a lot of this phenomenon at work until this year,” said Bruce E. Cain, the director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Now, Mr. Cain said, the easiest way for Republicans to “stay competitive is to take deviations from the standard G.O.P. lines.

In many ways, the strategy reflects the dynamics of local contests, in which voters are willing to overlook the party affiliation of a candidate if they believe he stands with them on one or two important issues, or pushes through policies that are inherently nonpartisan and that will improve their daily lives.

“The ideology that binds Republican governors is getting things done for their constituents,” said Philip A. Musser, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “From the broadest perspective, voters in these races go into the booth caring less if governor is pro life or pro choice and more about whether he is going to reduce their property taxes or make their life easier at the D.M.V.”